Skip to main content
Main

Crecy Soup

A vegetable soup thickened with arrowroot and cream, made from carrots, turnip, onion, celery, and stock.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Turnip and arrowroot share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 64 recipes. Both carry coumarin, which smells sweet, hay. The science ↓

Crecy Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare and cook the vegetables

  1. Boil the carrots in salted water for 1 hour.

  2. Chop the carrots.

  3. Place the chopped carrots with the other vegetables in a pan with the stock and herbs.

  4. Simmer until tender, about 1 hour.

  5. Strain the mixture.

Thicken and finish

  1. Blend the arrowroot with a little cold stock or milk.

  2. Add the hot soup to the arrowroot mixture.

  3. Return the mixture to the pan.

  4. Stir until it boils.

  5. Stir in the cream before serving.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Turnip + arrowroottop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together64 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  2. Carrot + celerytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together10,173 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + turniptop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,002 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  4. Turnip + celerytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,418 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  5. Turnip + oniontop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together7,585 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Carrots
Form the main body and natural sweetness of the soup as they soften.
Turnip
Adds body and a mild, earthy flavor as it cooks down.
Onion
Builds a savory base flavor as it softens in the stock.
Light-colored stock
Provides the main liquid and carries the flavor of the vegetables and herbs.
Arrowroot
Thickens the soup as its starch swells when heated and boiled.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, velvety mouthfeel to the finished soup.

The step that matters

Thickening with arrowroot. Arrowroot starch thickens only when hot and stirred, and it must be smoothly blended first. Stirring as it comes to a boil keeps granules from clumping and settling, giving an even, glossy texture.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (carrot, turnip, celery, cream, arrowroot):

  1. Parsnipfits better
  2. Leekfits better
  3. Beetrootfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against carrot, turnip, celery, cream, arrowroot. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Carrot SoupCarrot Soup134 recipesCream of Celery SoupCream of Celery Soup113 recipesTurnip SoupTurnip Soup43 recipesArrowroot GruelArrowroot Gruel37 recipes